Airlines: On Howard Hughes' Account

For the past seven years, elusive
Industrialist Howard Hughes and Trans World Airlines have been tangled in
a complex legal battle. The conflict dates back to late 1960, when
Hughes, in return for $165 million in loans to pay for TWA's first
jets, had to surrender his 78.2% ownership of the airline to a voting
trust controlled by the lending banks and insurance companies.

When Hughes objected to the way the new trustee-appointed management was
running the company, TWA's new president, Charles Tillinghast Jr. (TIME
cover, July 22, 1966), engaged in a bit of preemptive warfare. TWA hit
Hughes...